Best scripted characters in a video game?

[Oexmelin]

Following conversation in Metzen's thread.

Who would you consider the best scripted characters in a video game? i.e., the characters most believable, most fleshed-out, most engaging?

For my part, I really enjoyed Kreia, from KOTOR2. 

[Syt]

Hm, there's quite a few games that come to mind, but enjoying a character doesn't necessarily mean "best scripted." There's Telltale's Games, there Bioware's companions, and there's other narrative experiences, like Life is Strange to whose characters and their large and small drama and mysteries I becamse very attached - even though I only watched a Let's Play (I didn't think a time travel mystery about college girls would engross me so - not least because of the strong writing between two best, very different friends reunited after five years).

I will need to think and reflect.

[celedhring]

Following conversation in Metzen's thread.

Who would you consider the best scripted characters in a video game? i.e., the characters most believable, most fleshed-out, most engaging?

For my part, I really enjoyed Kreia, from KOTOR2.

Loved Kreia myself. One of my favorite videogame characters of all time, although towards the end she becomes a pretty regular Sith Lord villain, despite how wonderfully gray she's depicted throughout the game. I presume the rush to finish the game had something to do with that, though.

Andrew Ryan, Elle from Last of Us.

I also have a really soft spot for comedic villains: Handsome Jack and GladOS made me replay their respective games just to encounter them again...

[Caliga]

Lee from Walking Dead definitely deserves at least an honorable mention.

[Oexmelin]

Hm, there's quite a few games that come to mind, but enjoying a character doesn't necessarily mean "best scripted."

It is true. By best scripted, I mean with some depth - which may or may not be from their actual scripts, but from their actions as well.  One can enjoy a character beyond what that character has to say, or to offer. I found Minsc, in Baldur's Gate, quite enjoyable, because he's got some funny lines and is a valuable help - but I wouldn't call him well scripted. He's not very deep. By Baldur's Gate II, he has become more interesting. The writers play better the contrast between his emotional and mental fragility and his strength, but that is sort of a staple of such character. One can certainly care for him (or I least I did), but I still wouldn't put him on the list of best scripted characters.

I agree wholeheartedly about GladOS, in no small part because of the delivery of the actress playing her.

[Valmy]

Kreia was definitely awesome.

Man it is hard to say. Jon Irenicus was definitely a great villain. His lines were great (and rather hammy but not too hammy), his motivation was clear, you actually felt a little sorry for him, and he was not at all what you expected coming into that game from the first Baldur's Gate.

One character who I remembered really liking and finding interesting who I did not expect to was Miranda Lawson from Mass Effect 2. She was promoted like hell before before the game to be kind of an asshole and of course she was designed as the Jessica Rabbit of the universe which was also a major turnoff. But she turned out to be pretty cool and complicated and not at all as she was sold to the player.

I guess those stand out because I expected them to not be interesting or engaging but they turned out to be. Are they really the most? Probably not.

In strategy gaming I really liked all the leaders from Alpha Centauri, I wish they would do that kind of thing again.

The good guys AND bad guys from the first two Gabriel Knight games were excellent and most media fails to make both sides interesting which is why I often gold star those games from a character perspective. I don't even remember who the villains were from the third game.

[Oexmelin]

Loved Kreia myself. One of my favorite videogame characters of all time, although towards the end she becomes a pretty regular Sith Lord villain, despite how wonderfully gray she's depicted throughout the game. I presume the rush to finish the game had something to do with that, though.

I also have a really soft spot for comedic villains: Handsome Jack and GladOS made me replay their respective games just to encounter them again...

There is something cathartic about good villains - in video games as in movies.

I also often wonder about older games vs newer ones, where actors can make all the difference in the world. I have only played Borderlands 2 at my parents (!) when I visited, and found Handsome Jack insufferable in French. By opposition, I am still amazed at how the ensemble cast of Planescape Torment, with just of few lines delivered by actors, could inflect the reading of all that dialog in really touching ways: scratching through the surface of Dakkon, Anna and Morte with only the grain of their voice in mind was quite a feat. 

[Valmy]

Loved Kreia myself. One of my favorite videogame characters of all time, although towards the end she becomes a pretty regular Sith Lord villain, despite how wonderfully gray she's depicted throughout the game. I presume the rush to finish the game had something to do with that, though.

She was strangely resigned to her fate though. Which I found interesting.

[Valmy]

I also often wonder about older games vs newer ones, where actors can make all the difference in the world. I have only played Borderlands 2 at my parents (!) when I visited, and found Handsome Jack insufferable in French. By opposition, I am still amazed at how the ensemble cast of Planescape Torment, with just of few lines delivered by actors, could inflect the reading of all that dialog in really touching ways: scratching through the surface of Dakkon, Anna and Morte with only the grain of their voice in mind was quite a feat. 

Oh yeah you got that right. How could I not mention the PS cast? I think the fact that the Transcendent One was rather unmemorable hurts that game a bit.

I remember how interested I was even in characters who died before the game started, like the blind archer.

[Oexmelin]

Oh yeah you got that right. How could I not mention the PS cast? I think the fact that the Transcendent One was rather unmemorable hurts that game a bit.

It's true - though it had the effect of displacing the stakes of the game. The Big Baddie almost did not matter. It was about finding resolution. The fact that you could triumph over the Transcendent One without fighting also de-emphasized the "Epic Fight" expectations of the genre. In retrospect, even if I love Tony Jay, I wonder if his deep commanding voice did not prevent the player from seizing upon the ultimate fragility of an enemy born of sorrow and regrets.

[Syt]

I'm kind of struggling, because a lot of characters in games are not very nuanced and often just fill a certain archetype. That's not inherently bad, but it often doesn't lend itself to much character depth.

Since I've had a lot of time on my hand here in Switzerland I've rewatched SF Debris' (narrative) review and anaylsis of KotOR, Mass Effect 2, and Dragon Age: Origins again. He highlights some Bioware tropes pretty well by comparing/mapping the companions in DA:O to KotOR - Alistair is Carth Onasi, Leliana is Mission, Morrigan is Bastila etc. I don't agree with all his points, but it's pretty compelling. Watch it if you have 6 hours to kill (to be fair, it comes in 10 episodes).

When I think well written characters I think of ones that are flawed or misguided, or otherwise interesting - characters that undergo a real journey or surprised me in the end.

Loghain from DA:O comes to mind who is a gifted general with good intentions, but nearly ruins the kingdom.

Max from Life is Strange who uses her time traveling powers to improve lives around her and find a missing girl, maturing over the course of the tale - only to realize in the end that the best might have been to not interfere at all.

There's the old Republic soldier in KotOR who is accused of killing his Sith lover who was surprisingly layered for a side quest character.

There's Wolf from Telltale's The Wolf Among Us, treading the thin line between his base instincts as Big Bad Wolf, and enforcing Law & Order.

I thought about including Phelps from L.A. Noire, but throughout the game some of his actions and motivations are all over the place ("Wait, why is his marriage suddenly dead and he's in love with a lounge singer??").



After some consideration I may have to give my vote to Cpt. Walker, the protagonist in Spec Ops: The Line. The gameplay in SO:TL is typical cover based 3rd person shooter: you're sent some place (a destroyed Dubai), the situation escalates and you murder your way through hordes of enemies on your way to the final goal.

Where SO:TL deviates is that it examines what kind of character such a person would have to be: instead of fulfilling the mission and reporting back to base, he gets embroiled ever deeper in a private war, hoping that there will be redemption or some worthwhile resolution or heorism in the end.

He starts as your regular patriotic hero, but descends ever deeper into brutality and insanity (emphasized by the fact that level design almost always has you moving horizontally or descending, rarely ascending), and reflected by the increasingly wary reactions of his team mates.

He becomes ever more hurt and wounded throughout the game until he's a bloody, filthy mess by the end. His in combat shouts go from short and professional to expletive laden curses. He blames his misdeeds on his enemies, that they made him do it in order to progress (fascinatingly, gamers leveled the same criticism at the developers for a section that you could only avoid if you stopped playing the game).

Eventually he realizes that he's been chasing a chimera and breaks completely.

Nolan North (known for his Uncharted performance, and for whom Spec Ops apparently was a passion project) turns in a great descent into madness, supported by a great cast (Christopher Reid, Bruce Boxleitner, Jake Busey, ...).

[Valmy]

He highlights some Bioware tropes pretty well by comparing/mapping the companions in DA:O to KotOR - Alistair is Carth Onasi, Leliana is Mission, Morrigan is Bastila etc. I don't agree with all his points, but it's pretty compelling.

Alistair is the third or fourth attempt to make Anomen likable. They finally succeeded.

Naturally they have character tropes that they repeat but just because a character fits a trope does not make it a non-compelling character.

Loghain from DA:O comes to mind who is a gifted general with good intentions, but nearly ruins the kingdom.

Good call.

[Oexmelin]

I was unconvinced about Loghain. I agree that his motivations contribute to making him an interesting character, but it seemed a little one-note angry and dour: I had a hard time seeing how he could command such loyalty apart from his past successes, if I hadn't been told and reminded by a dozen or so characters. His betrayal of the king didn't feel *that* painful to him, and his increasing clutching at the Crown could have been better scripted, I felt. Rather than have the sinister lord Howe side with him and the noble Arl Eamon side with you (making it easier to despise Loghain as a traitor *and* an associate of crooks), it may even have more productive to do the reverse. The sinister, power-hungry lord capable of seeing the true threat (and betting on you to rise in the process), and the noble lord blinded with devotion to the national cause siding with Loghain. But maybe they felt it was already the dwarf kingdom's story.

[Syt]

By opposition, I am still amazed at how the ensemble cast of Planescape Torment, with just of few lines delivered by actors, could inflect the reading of all that dialog in really touching ways: scratching through the surface of Dakkon, Anna and Morte with only the grain of their voice in mind was quite a feat.

I recently started playing this. I looked up the voice actors and was surprised that they actually had a very good cast of well known names in 1999 - Michael T. Weiss (who was the lead in The Pretender which was in its 4th or 5th season at the time), Rob Paulson (who was Yakko on Animaniacs), Sheena Easton (WTF?), Mitch Pileggi (Skinner from X-Files), Charles Adler (Buster Bunny from Tiny Toons), Dan Castellaneta, Tony Jay (a regular on many animated shows, and Frollo in Disney's Hunchback), John De Lancie ... pretty big names for how small the devs were at the time.

[Scipio]

Tales from the Borderlands's Jack is probably my favorite.